1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transmitting/receiving system in which various types of data are exchanged by wireless communication between a transmitting apparatus and a receiving device, and, more particularly, to a transmitting/receiving system and a medical system in which various types of data including image data are exchanged by broadband wireless communication and a received electric-field strength at which data is received is detected.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of endoscopes, capsule endoscopes with an image capturing function and a wireless communication function have been used, and a transmitting/receiving system including a capsule endoscope that wirelessly transmits data about captured images (an example of a transmitting apparatus) and a receiving device provided outside a subject, such as a patient, has been proposed. In the transmitting/receiving system, the capsule endoscope is introduced into the subject from the mouth for observation (examination). Thereafter, until being naturally excreted from the subject, the capsule endoscope sequentially captures images of the internal of the organs (hereinafter, sometimes referred to as “in-vivo images”) at predetermined intervals of, for example, 0.5 second while moving through the alimentary canal. Each time when the capsule endoscope captures in-vivo images in the subject, the capsule endoscope wirelessly and sequentially transmits data about the in-vivo images (hereinafter, “in-vivo image data”) to the outside.
The in-vivo image data wirelessly transmitted by the capsule endoscope inside the subject is sequentially received by the receiving device. The receiving device receives a wireless signal from the capsule endoscope via a plurality of receiving antennas arranged on the body surface of the subject, and performs predetermined processing including decoding on the wireless signal. In this manner, the receiving device obtains the in-vivo image data about the subject. The in-vivo image data received by the receiving device is sequentially stored in a recording medium inserted into the receiving device. Thereafter, the recording medium is detached from the receiving device and inserted into an image display device. The image display device reads the image data from the receiving device, stores the in-vivo image data in its memory, and displays the in-vivo images on its display based on the in-vivo image data. A user, such as a doctor or a nurse, observes the in-vivo images displayed on the image display device and diagnoses the subject.
As such a system configured to wirelessly exchange various types of data including image data, there is a conventional system in which a signal received via an antenna is branched to a signal strength detecting system and a signal processing system, the signal strength detecting system detects a signal strength of the signal, and the signal processing system performs predetermined signal processing on the signal (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2007-049730 or No. 2004-310420).